Wall Street’s largest trade group is about to try taking down the financial nerve center of the United States. The FBI and SEC, as well as the U.S. departments of Treasury and Homeland Security, are among about 50 banks, exchanges and other organizations participating in a high-tech war game to test institutional and individual readiness for an all-out cyber-assault. About 50 banks, exchanges and other organizations will spend Thursday testing Wall Street’s readiness for an all-out cyber-assault. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) will kick off Quantum Dawn 2 on Thursday in hopes of “informing best practices moving forward.” The mounting threat of organized, full-on cyber-attack on the financial services industry prompted the drill. …read more
South Korea on Tuesday blamed North Korea for a crippling cyber attack last month against a number of government and news media websites.
The South’s science ministry said hackers in the attack from June 25 to July 1 used at least one IP address that was used in earlier attacks blamed on North Korea.
“North Korea is believed to be behind the attack,” senior ministry official Park Jae-Moon told reporters.
North Korea was blamed for major intrusions in 2009 and 2011 that targeted South Korean financial institutions and government agencies.
Seoul also accused Pyongyang’s military intelligence agency of launching a major cyber attack in March, which shut down the networks of three TV broadcasters and crippled operations at three banks.
The malware used in last month’s attack was found to be a variation of the one used in the March 20 cyber attack, Park said.
Almost all websites and servers of 69 government offices and private organisations targeted in the attack were now operating normally, Park said.
Konami has become the latest high-profile target of a cyber attack.
Earlier this week the publisher detected 35,252 unauthorised logins to its Konami ID service from over 4 million attempts. The IDs and passwords appear to have been leaked from an external service provider, which has yet to be named.
In an official statement, the Japanese company revealed the attack took place over an extended period of time between Thursday, June 13th, 2013 and Sunday, July 7th, 2013. And Konami has stated that names, addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers and email addresses may have been exposed during the attack.
Chinese hackers have stolen top-secret blueprints to Australia’s new intelligence agency headquarters, a report said Tuesday, but Foreign Minister Bob Carr insisted ties with Beijing would not be hurt.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the documents taken in the cyber hit included cabling layouts for the huge building’s security and communications systems, its floor plan, and its server locations.
Carr said the government was “very alive” to the threat of cyber attacks on national security, adding that “nothing that is being speculated about takes us by surprise”.
But he refused to confirm or deny China was behind the attack.
“I won’t comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not,” he said.
“I won’t comment on matters of intelligence and security for the obvious reason: we don’t want to share with the world and potential aggressors what we know about what they might be doing, and how they might be doing it.”
While Australia has a long-standing military alliance with the United States, China is its largest trading partner and the two countries have been forging closer ties.
Carr insisted that the relationship would not be damaged by the allegations, which follow several other hacking attacks on government facilities in the past two years.
“It’s got absolutely no implications for a strategic partnership,” he said. “We have enormous areas of cooperation with China.”
The revelations saw Canberra came under pressure to launch an independent inquiry into the “sorry saga” by opposition politicians, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard declined to comment on “these unsubstantiated reports”.
File photo of Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr in Beijing in May 2012. Carr Tuesday insisted ties with China would not be hurt by a report that Chinese hackers have stolen top secret blueprints to Australia’s new intelligence agency headquarters.
The state broadcaster’s investigative Four Corners programme said the attack on a contractor involved with building the new Canberra headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was traced to a server in China.
It cited security experts as saying the theft exposed the agency to being spied on and may be the reason for a cost blowout and delays to the opening of the building, which was supposed to be operational last month.
Des Ball, from the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said the blueprints would show which rooms were likely to be used for sensitive conversations, and how to put devices into the walls.
“Once you get those building plans you can start constructing your own wiring diagrams, where the linkages are through telephone connections, through wi-fi connections,” he was quoted as saying.
The report, which did not say when the alleged theft took place, comes amid deepening concern about aggressive state-sponsored hacking by China.
In 2011, the computers of Australia’s prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister were all suspected of being hacked, with the attacks reportedly originating in China.
At the time, Canberra said cyber attacks had become so frequent that government and private networks were under “continuous threat”.
Beijing dismissed the allegations as “groundless and made out of ulterior purposes”.
Earlier this year, computer networks at the Reserve Bank of Australia were hacked, with some said to be infected by Chinese-developed malware searching for sensitive information.
This followed Chinese telecoms giant Huawei being barred in 2012 from bidding for contracts on Australia’s ambitious Aus$36 billion (US$35 billion) broadband rollout due to fears of cyber attacks.
